Shots fired: 1 dead, four hurt

By
Henri E. Cauvin

Gunfire early Saturday morning near the Anacostia Freeway in Southeast Washington left one person dead and four other people wounded, D.C. police said.

Officers responded at about 2:30 a.m. to a report of shots fired the 1700 block of 14th St. SE and found a man with apparent gunshot wounds, a police spokesman, Officer Hugh Carew, said Saturday. The man was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, Carew said.

While officers were on the 14th Street scene, a report came in of gunshot victims a couple of hundred feet away, in the 1400 block of Ridge Place SE. There, officers found three people with gunshot wounds who were transported to the hospital, Carew said. Another person shot in that incident went to the hospital separately, Carew said.

Police do not yet know, Carew said, whether the shootings are connected or whether the man killed was shot in the same incident as the other four wounded victims. The identity of the man killed was not immediately available, Carew said.

The level of marksmanship in these urban shootings is simply appalling. Consider just a hundred miles west of DC, in the mountains, you have crackers that can down a running deer with a single shot from a distance of 100 yards or better.

Pentagon, So it's racist to protest what has happened to our communities in WDC? Here is an article by left-winger Capehart about the murder rate in New York City. If the culprits/victims are that overwheimingly minority up there, I'd imagine a much higher percentage here because of demographics.

So Pentagon, what is your solution to this horror..to this nightmare of chaos and anarchy, rule by the gun, to the supremacy of the ignorant and violent, to the death of civilization? Shaming doesn't work; we're not allowed to discuss this less we be "racist." But lets quit the pretending and call it what it is. SOMEBODY IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY DO something about this madness!! It's time for the HUNTED to rise up.

Capehart, 10 Nov 2010 column except:

"Inshort, 95.1 percent of all murder victims and 95.9 percent of all shooting victims in New York City are black or Hispanic. And 90.2 percent of those arrested for murder and 96.7 percent of those arrested for shooting someone are black and Hispanic. I don't even know where to begin to describe the horror I still feel looking at those numbers. But the word "hunted" comes to mind.

People have railed against black-on-black crime for decades. And yet it persists. Yes, there are a host of factors that push someone to a life of crime, but not all of them have to do with the limitations or failures of society. Some folks are just plain evil, and no amount of social intervention will stop them from preying on people, especially people who look like them.

People have also railed -- and rightly so -- against the disproportionate application of the law against people of color. Bob Herbert has used barrels of New York Times ink against the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policy. But when faced with such stark murder and shooting statistics, what's a police commissioner supposed to do to ensure the safety of the public?

All of society has an obligation to ensure that its citizens can live their lives in peace and security. The police are doing their job. Leaders in the African American and Latino communities have struggled to do their part, as well. Myriad organizations exist in New York City and across the country to steer the wayward on a better path and to protect potential victims from those who violently veer off it. But new alliances must be formed between the two to get guns off the streets and to break the "stop snitching" culture that allows cases to go unsolved, criminals to go free and communities to cower in fear. It's time to stop being speechless and feeling powerless. It's time the hunted fought back."